Tuesday, January 27, 2009

With George Bush now dumped into the dustbin of history, millions of people around the world are hoping that the new American president Barak H. Obama will make a genuine departure from the conspicuously criminal policies that characterized his predecessor’s gloomy era.

Undoubtedly, Bush excelled in the perpetration of evil. He murdered, killed, deceived and lied, thinking he was doing a great service to America and the world.

His era was drenched with blood, mostly the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, killed unjustly under the misleading rubric of “the war on terror.”

Friday, January 16, 2009

Hi Everybody,

here are the details of the March for next week, please bring any old keys etc along to the March to represent the number of dead in Gaza since the beginning of the Siege.....we want to have around 1000 keys on the day.

CFJP is a group of Christians shocked into action by the present massive casualties in Gaza. We have gathered to demand a more active role from the NZ government in ensuring a just and lasting peace in Palestine.

As an initial action, we will be meeting at the Rabin memorial in Harris Street for a moment of silence to remember the 60 years of dispossession and suffering of Palestinians since 1948. The group will then move to Civic Square where a mass 'die-in' will take place. Participants will be invited to 'die' as a symbolic representation of the lives being lost at present.

At the end of the protest, a petition will be presented to the government via the nearby National Party headquarters.

The protest will be non-violent. All who wish to participate - believers or non-believers are invited. Please bring/ wear "bloodstained" clothes and/or bandages to be presented with the petition. Religious ministers are invited to wear their clerical garb.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

The Wellington Palestine Group states that it was collectively responsible for the action which Gerard Burns undertook at the Yitzak Rabin Memorial in Wellington on Tuesday. Gerard Burns courageously carried out the symbolic act which was prepared and planned by the Group.

Wellington Palestine Group spokesperson Omar Khamoun says “we chose this memorial in Wellington as the object of our protest to highlight the long trajectory of Palestinian dispossession and suffering, which former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin was party to”.

Khamoun says “Israeli historians document Rabin’s war crimes including the key role he played in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the districts of Lydda and Ramleh in 1948; his leading of Israeli forces in the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights. He is also infamous for his "broken bones policy" which openly encouraged breaking bones of peaceful Palestinian demonstrators during the first Intifada”The memorial which was placed in Wellington in 2000 without public consultation is sponsored by the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Khamoun says “The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is a racist organisation that administers the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by managing land stolen from the Palestinians for the exclusive benefit of the Israeli Jewish population.”The group also chose the memorial to illustrate the insidiousness of the international public relations campaign waged by Israel creating mythical stories of figures like Rabin as peacemakers. “Rabin was never a peacemaker. Even after the signing of Oslo, he declared in front of the Israeli parliament that Israel will get peace without conceding anything”. Khamoun says.

The Wellington Palestine Group supports a solution to the Palestine/Israel question based on UN resolutions 242 and 194, but it sees this becoming increasingly difficult because of Israeli settlements and ongoing military repression.

Vatican justice and peace minister Cardinal Renato Martino described Gaza yesterday as “increasingly resembl[ing] a big concentration camp.” The military history of Rabin and the present bombing of Gaza make “spilling blood” on Rabin’s plaque entirely appropriate.

If the newly founded ‘Kiwi Friends of Israel’ are so offended by a drop of blood mixed with water soluble paint, then they should be outraged by the rivers of blood flowing in the streets, mosques, schools and hospitals of Gaza. What is really being desecrated, a stone monument or the sacredness of real lives?